Michelle (00:05.614)
Welcome to Ritual Sisters, the podcast where your hosts and fellow travelers, Michelle and Kelly, explore the ways that ritual can help you feel better through the ups and downs of life. So let's take a deep breath and start this journey together.

Michelle (00:30.862)
We have a very special, very awesome guest on the podcast today. It is Terri Kotman. She's a PhD, RPTS, LMHC, and the developer of Adlerian Play Therapy, which is a very cool model, and maybe she'll explain a little bit more about what that means. She's authored and co-authored a bunch of different books about play therapy And in 2014, she won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Play Therapy. So we are so excited to have her on and yeah, welcome, Terri.

Kelly
 Yes, welcome. 

Terry
Thank you 

Michelle
Yeah. So why don't we get started just if you could tell us a little bit about yourself. And we always ask our guests, what season of life are you in right now?

Terry
Let's see, I'm old? I guess that's the season of life. I am a person who always expected to die. So I feel like I'm in the bonus season of life. When Rick and I were first married, I used to say to him, I don't need to save money for retirement because I'm going to die before I'm like 50. And then I didn't. So we had a big party when I turned 50. And then I said, well, I'm going to die before I'm 55. We had a big party when I was 55, et cetera. I'm 71. I have a lot of conversations with people about being an elder. I guess that's what I am. And so, so my beloved says, that were in the final chapter. I prefer to lean into that I'm in the generativity part. So the, I'm still blossoming and creating and doing things and not sitting around kind of waiting to die.

Michelle 
I like that reframe. My mom was just saying she has a friend that keeps saying that they're in the drop zone. That's how she's describing the their phase of life. she's like, this is really upsetting.

Terry 
I have This is a friend who says we're in the end game. I don't like that any better. 

Michelle
Yeah, so generativity, that's nice.

Terry (03:08.792)
So that's what I'm leaning into. I'm the oldest of five kids. I have one child. He's adopted. I have a husband that I'm about to be married to for 50 years.

Kelly
 Congratulations. 

Terry
And I still am madly in love with him, which is pretty kind of cool, I guess. Not that many people that have been married this long, I think, are as lovey-dovey as we are.


Michelle (03:34.926)
Yeah, I think, yeah, we heard about this on your interview with Lisa Dion and just, think that is such a good point of the happily and being in love, I think is something that's unique. a lot, some people might be able to say, I've been married this long, but maybe not have that loving piece of it too.

Terry
My husband is radically different than I am. He's an engineer. So he's very logical. He's very precise. Very… well, Jacob used to call him when Jacob was in high school, Jacob called him, among other things, “no affect man”. Or he would introduce him to people and say, this is my dad. He doesn't really have any feelings. My mom got all the feelings.


Michelle (04:15.342)
Wow. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I love that. “My mom got all the feelings”. That's cute. Thank you for that introduction. That's helpful.

Kelly
Yeah. No, that's so helpful. 

Terry (04:36.206)
I did not talk about like professional stuff when people asked me to introduce myself because my, rest of my life feels much more important to me than my job. And I have such weird jobs. I've such weird conglomeration of jobs. I always think my jobs are like a big puzzle. technically speaking, I'm old enough to be retired. And I was actually going to retire. I arbitrarily picked a date that I thought was entertaining, which is the kind of thing I do on a pretty regular basis. So I was going to retire on 10/10/2020, because I liked the date. It had no significance other than I thought it was funny. And then, obviously, the pandemic happened. And so my big retirement plan, like my very carefully planned out, I'm going to train people to teach other and play therapy, and then I'm going to gradually move myself out of the whole process, etc. turned out to be not very viable because of the pandemic. So I have a whole bunch of different jobs kind of cobbled together and I volunteer a huge amount. Unlike the rest of the people in my family of origin where no one volunteers. So I volunteer a lot. So I do a lot of stuff for free. So before the pandemic, I had a private practice. After the pandemic, I decided not to continue the private practice. But I volunteer one day a week at a school and I do play therapy at this elementary school that I've been doing play therapy at for 25 years. And so I go and play with kids because I think you shouldn't teach play therapy if you don't do play therapy. I have that like really basic core belief.

Kelly
Wow.

Terry (06:44.47)
And so I get to do play therapy at the school, which is super sweet of them because they let me. I have a master's in special ed. So a lot of the kids that I work with are in special ed. Just because that's kind of, I'm drawn to kids that need extra help in school and stuff. I used to teach, I was a special ed teacher, so I used to teach behavior to sort of emotionally disturb kids. I love kids who other people think are not good kids.

And so, so I do that. I also teach play therapy a lot still. I teach for LEAPT, which is my training company. That's so weird to say I have a company. so, but apparently I do, I have like 14 teachers who teach for us. And so I kind of run the company kind of sort of, but I do it with my husband and we have a person who actually is the like.

Uh, what did she call him? She has an official name. She's like the head of things. Helps keep things moving. And yeah, she's really amazing. And, um, so, so she's the director. That's what she is. She's the director. And, um, so I do that and, and I go all kind of around the world and.

teach about Adlerian play therapy. So I do that. And then I have other little things that I do that are, I go to Atlanta twice a year and teach, co-teach adventure therapy with Jeff Ashby at Georgia State University. I teach for IASI, which is the International Adlerian Summer School. And I get to go all over the world with them, but I don't get paid for that either. So Rick would say these are not real jobs.

I also volunteer at a community theater. I do improv stuff and I volunteer at another organization that does things with teenagers who come from families that nobody's ever gone to college. so I'm somebody's mentor, a high school young ladies mentor, which is super fun and super cool. 

Kelly
So much good work, Terry. And actually our most recent episode we have is on improv.

Yes, so that's kind of a fun crossover. And I know we've mentioned play therapy a few times, so I'm wondering maybe between you and Michelle, just sharing for listeners, especially for those that maybe don't have a context of what is play therapy.


Terry (09:31.286)
Okay, the way I think about play therapy, Michelle, you help, okay, please. But the way I think about play therapy is relatively, it's a very broad definition, which is if you counsel people, not necessarily just kids, because in my private practice, I used to work with teens and adults mostly. So you counsel somebody, but you use play, toys, storytelling, art.

something called sand tray, which is you take little like figures, like little items and you put them in a box with sand. That's really what sand tray is. It's a lot more complicated than that, but ultimately that's what it is. So you use all those things to counsel people with the idea that sometimes doing things is actually more useful than just talking about things.

Michelle 
Yeah, I think, yeah, that the communication piece where when people think about therapy, they think about talking through your problems. But play therapy is about pulling in this other mode of communication, which is play. And it's a natural mode of communication that we all have innate in us. So children, especially gravitate towards play. But I think all of us, we would say, do have this, this playful drive within us, right?

Terry (11:03.362)
And I think, you know, like, as I think about counseling, like teens and adults, one of the things that I know is that if I can get somebody to do something that shifts how they see themselves, how they see the world, how they see other people, if I can get them to do something instead of just talk about something, they're much more likely to get it in their, like, their insides.

Like another level. Yeah. Yeah, so it takes it from just like a cognitive yeah, I understand what this pattern is and why I'm doing it or why it's actually not helpful and lots of times if you do things with it, then they Actually go. “yeah, and this really doesn't work for me. I really don't This is not a helpful thing. So I need to make some changes.” and I find that communicating through play and art and the sand tray and even adventure therapy things. So like playing tag or I play a lot of games about what are your rules for life, for instance, that are adventure therapy, which is another form of doing therapy, basically, instead of talking therapy. That's the way I think about it.


Michelle (12:28.822)
We also ask everyone about your relationship to ritual. So what comes to mind when you hear ritual and do you have any specific rituals in your life?

Terry
A bazillion. 


Kelly 
Yes, we love to hear that, Terri. 

Terry
So I love ritual. When I was a kid, I was raised Catholic, and Catholicism is filled with ritual. And as a child, I made up little mini rituals to like do things like how I was going to go to bed, for instance, I had a ritual when I was a little kid.

And weirdly, my son and I then had like ongoing rituals about going to bed between he and I. And my family of origin was very big on tradition and ritual. And so we had a lot of like, “I love you” rituals growing up even. And so I was kind of raised with lots of rituals. And so, when Rick and I first got married, I said, so I mean, I didn't actually say, how are you with ritual or whatever, but I said, I really like to have things that are kind of predictable things that I can do with people who I care about. And so Rick and I, we were first married, even designed some, I love you rituals.

Kelly 
Do you have an example? This is really precious. 

Terry
Like Rick will go, if he's feeling like he's not connected in the ways that he wants to connect, he'll stick out his finger like this and then I have two choices. I can either do this, which is like I touch fingers with him, which is basically, “yes, I'm connected”, or I'll do like this and I'll do, I'll make this little kind of rocking movement with my hand surrounding his finger, which is “I've got ya.”

Michelle (14:39.278)
It's so beautiful.

Terry
During the pandemic, because we were, at least at the beginning of the pandemic, when people were so anxious even about touching one another, we suspended that ritual for the first six to nine months of the pandemic. But we developed a different one, which is either one of us, and we still do this actually, either one of us can say, “hey” and then the other one looks up, makes eye contact and says, hey, back. as a way to establish, “hey, we got each other.”

Michelle (15:19.66)
Yeah, that's very powerful. Thank you for sharing that.

Kelly
And I love how accessible that is. Like I'm just thinking about listeners hearing that and thinking, okay, like, yeah, that requires no money, right? Just time with a loved one and that intention to connect. 

Terry
And then for Rick and I, if, and we do this with Jake too. So if one of us just feels like a little needy during the course of a day, one of us will stick their hand out, just like their palm up. And the other one does does this [gestures putting fingers into open palm] and like we put love in each other's hands so we just take our like fingers and put it in the other person's palm and that's like and I I always make this little kind of little sound like a magic sound and kind of tickle the their palms.

Michelle
Yeah, and it speaks to kind of what you were talking about earlier with doing something versus saying it, that extra embodiment of the ritual goes deeper than the cognitive.


Terry (16:36.398)
When Jacob got married, his wife comes from a family that didn't really do very much ritual and was kind of conditional to a certain extent. And so one of the things Jacob said to me before he even married Alina, like when Alina came to join the family, one of the things he said to me was, mom, you need to teach Alina about the fact that in our family you can't lose hugs. And I'm like, okay, Jake. And so I said to Alina, so in our family you can't lose hugs. And she said, well, what exactly does that mean? And in our family, even if somebody's mad at you, if you want a hug, you just say, can I have a hug? And you automatically get one. And it's a ritual to basically kind of systematize the idea that we are not conditional, that we can be irritated with or even really mad at one another and we are not gonna stop loving you, we're not gonna kick you out of the family, we're with you even if we're mad.

And so we have this thing where we'll say on a pretty regular basis, I actually need a hug right now. And so we started doing that. We started doing it because, because Rick, when we were first married… I come from a family that's very volatile, lots and lots of fighting, lots and lots of yelling and screaming. And Rick's comes from a family that doesn't fight visibly ever.

And so I would kind of actually, ritually try to piss him off to get him to react. And so I would do things like, at one point during the first year we were married, I threw cans at his head.

I threw my wedding ring in his face. And I would, when I was really mad, I would not let him touch me. And then he felt bereft.

And so he was like, he initiated, we need to have some kind of a ritual so that I know even if you're mad that you still love me. Which is how the you can't lose hug ritual kind of evolved.

Michelle (19:24.494)
This segues really beautifully into the next topic, because you've kind of mentioned that you do a lot of work around evaluating rules. And so we were wondering if you could kind of share more about how families can evaluate, are the rules working for them, what rituals they want to put in place, all that kind of stuff.
Terry
So I do this thing that's called the rules game with a lot of families. And so the rules game, should I teach it to you?

Michelle
Yeah, I think I did this in, I did your adventure therapy workshop. So is it with the balloon?

Terry
Yes, there's two ways to do it. Well, there's more than two ways to do it. the easiest way to do it is to have one balloon and one tongue depressor, like for a family. And then the rules are you can only touch the balloon, so the balloon, you inflate the balloon first of all. That is important, an important step. And so you give them the balloon, you give them the tongue depressor, and you say okay so here are the rules, you can only touch the balloon with the tongue depressor, nobody can double touch, which means that you can't, if Michelle has the tongue depressor and she bops the balloon, then Kelly, she can't do it again until somebody else has done it. So then Kelly would have to grab the tongue depressor or whatever. So you can't double touch. And then the third rule is everybody's got to participate. And what happens is that people make up rules. So they make up a rule for instance, that the balloon can't touch the ground, which is actually not one of the rules.

And they make up that you can't just break the tongue depressor in half, Which is Not one of the rules and they make up that they have to stay standing up because you can just Sit on the ground in a circle or whatever and bop the balloon back and forth but nobody ever does that. So then what you say is, what were the rules? And you get them to tell you what the three rules were. And then you say, did you make up any rules? And people will start talking about all the rules they made up. And then we start saying,

Okay, so we've got a whole list of rules you guys made up about this game. What kinds of rules do you guys have about things that happen in your family? So things like bedtimes. Sometimes a bedtime might work for one kid, but that same bedtime might actually not work for another kid. But lots of families decide everybody has to go to bed at the same time.

Like, families have so many different rules. The first time I played a different version of the game, I came home and, and part of our rule is if I come home from traveling, Rick cooks. Rick's not a good cook. So my choices are really limited. And, so lots of times if he's in charge, he'll make hot dogs. I really don't like hot dogs, but if I don't want to cook, sometimes that's what my choice is. So one dayI came home from the first day away, the first time I played this game and I got out a can of yellow wax beans and Rick got out a can of pork and beans and we started to have a fight that we'd literally had for 20 years. It was the pork and bean bean fight.

And I would insist we have yellow wax beans because that's what my mom did with hot dogs. Rick would insist we have pork and beans because that's what his mom did with hot dogs. And suddenly in the middle of the fight, I kind of stopped and went, wait, what are we doing? I like pork and beans and I hate yellow wax beans.

I have been insisting for basically now at this point like 25 years that we have yellow wax beans but I hate yellow wax beans they make me want to puke. But I insisted for 25 years we have yellow wax beans because that's what my mom did. 

Kelly 
Wow that was so ingrained.

Terry
So I call my mom, mom do you still have yellow wax beans? And she uses a lot of bad words.
and says, no, I hate yellow wax beans, they taste like candles. And I said, I think the same thing. And she said, why did we have yellow wax beans then? Well, cause that's what my father's mother served with hot dogs.

Kelly
Mm-hmm.

Terry
So that kind of thing happens all the time in families and they don't stop and go, is this a real rule or is it a made-up rule? Is this a rule that works for us? Is it a rule that works for every single member of our family? Or do we need to either let go of that rule altogether or do we need to come up with something that will work?

And after the first time that whole thing that I just told you happened, like we started looking at lots and lots of our rules. And what we discovered is if Rick does something that I find annoying, it's almost always because he's not following my rule. In many cases, he doesn't even know that I have that rule because I haven't shared it with him.

If I start feeling guilty or I start feeling like super anxious, it's almost always because I'm not following my own rules. And so one of the things that I teach families to do is start paying attention to your feelings and start then asking yourself when you're irritated, what's my rule here? If you start feeling guilty or like super anxious your anxiety goes up, what rule are you not following that's your rule? And that's a way to help families think about being intentional setting their rules. 

Kelly
Gosh, I love that. Wow. I feel like I'm, this is life changing for me personally. Like I cannot wait for people to hear this.

Michelle
Wow. Yeah. And I think it's so good to like when we're thinking about ritual too that, to differentiate that where it's like anything when something becomes so rigid, there's drawbacks to it. So with our rituals, like even like what you mentioned in the pandemic, things shifted. We can always be evaluating our rituals and understanding is it serving me now? Did it serve me in the past? Will it continue to serve me? And that is ever evolving.

Terry
Yes, yes. Like we have this weird thing we do with silverware in our family because each of us has a certain, we have non matching silverware and each of us has a certain kind of silverware we like best. But when new people come into our family, they get very weirded out because we show them all the silverware choices and we say, What silverware do you want? And we'll actually remember what silverware you want because for each of us silverware is important.

But it's like a ritual that we do that's an entry to our family, oh, if you're gonna eat with us, you get your own silverware. 

Kelly
I wanna see what these options are. Now you've piqued my curiosity, Terry. 

Terry
Well, part of it's because Jacob and I have very high sensory sensitivity that like, temperament trait. And so we have certain things that we don't like the way they feel in our mouth.

Michelle
Something that's come up a lot when we ask people about ritual has been mugs, like what mug people choose. And I think that's part of it too, is like certain mugs have different feels and people get really drawn to a certain one.

Terry
Yes, and because I teach class at my house I have like 30 mugs but there's some that are just mine. And it's very bizarre. You can't tell this obviously, but I'm really short. And so I don't want to put the mugs that are mine on the top shelf because I can't reach them, but I don't want to put them on the bottom shelf because I don't want anybody else to get them. So I actually started taking all my personal mugs, which there's only three of, and putting them in separate cabinet so no one could discover them.

Michelle
That's amazing.

Kelly
That's good. like that. I might have to steal that trick. Terry, you've talked about this a little bit, but we'd love to maybe elaborate on rituals that help highlight familial patterns and ones that families want to keep versus ones that maybe they want to let go of. 

Terry
Well, part of it is it's always interesting to me about families because semi obviously two people come together. and they come from families that have different rituals. But not very many people actually then, when they first get married, negotiate. Like, what of the rituals that come from your family do we want to keep? And what don't we? I think I just did a lot of pre-marital counseling, and that was one of the things that I used to ask people. they were like, well, we've never thought about that. Nobody's ever… talked to us about that before, but for me that's super important. I come from a family that makes a very big deal out of birthdays. Rick's family makes not a big deal out of birthdays at all. And for the first basically, oh, 35 years we were married, I would spend all year coming up with a perfect birthday present for him, and I would give it to him on his birthday, which is at the end of November.

And he would go, oh, thanks, Terry. And I'd be like.. He would just stab me in the heart. And then like 16 days later is my birthday. And sometimes he would give me a present, sometimes he wouldn't. And the present that he gave me, like one year he gave me a Judy Collins album. He knew I did not like Judy Collins. He told me it was on sale. And that I liked other female vocalists, like singer songwriters, so I should like her.

Michelle (31:39.448)
no!

Terry
we still sometimes struggle with this. Christmas comes along, Valentine's Day comes along. So I proposed actually we come up with a new way for him to honor me. So now what he does is he designs new braids for my hair. And so instead of like a birthday present, I get a new braid that he designs for my hair, et cetera. Now it did take us 35 years to get to that place.


Kelly
I will say, when you said 35 years, that helped really, that felt reassuring, Terry, I have to say. Like, I was like, okay, there is hope. There is time.

Michelle
Yeah, well, I always talk to Kelly about I just I really don't like my birthday and I'm just always trying to find a way to celebrate that feels good. So I think this yeah, that's what's pinging for me and it is reassuring that time that time piece that I'm aware of this issue and I'm trying to resolve I'm trying to find some solution but it might take time.

Terry
I had to figure out what did he like, what does he like giving basically, right? And he likes taking care of me. He loves my hair and he's an engineer. So it like fit all of his criteria for what he likes to do. So he never begrudges that. And sometimes he'll say, Hey, I've been thinking about your, I've been thinking about your hair. I know it's not a special occasion, but can I make a new braid for you, which is pretty amazing. It's like a spontaneous gift. So my point is, and I do have one, that when we come from, we come from two different histories of ritual, basically. And part of what we need to think about is what's important to the people in our family, and are we just doing stuff because it's, because we've always done it this way. And like Michelle, knowing you aren't crazy about how your birthday gets celebrated yet. And so there's a little bit of dissatisfaction there. Like for years and years and years, we had turkey on Thanksgiving. And then when Jake was in high school, he said, mama, I really don't like turkey. and I said Jake I don't like turkey either and then Rick said, Ter and Jake I don't like turkey either so now we don't have turkey. We've spent the last about let's see 15 years trying to come up with something that we do want to do for Thanksgiving that all of us will like. And now we add Alina and my friend Sherry comes for Thanksgiving. So she's woven into that mix too. And so currently what we're doing is we're having ham, because all of us like that. But that still doesn't feel like it's kind of locked in yet. So every year, like starting about now, we start talking about how do we want to do Thanksgiving this year?

I like traditions. Rick doesn't care about traditions. Jake doesn't care about traditions. They're willing to do a tradition because I like traditions, but we haven't locked into something. But there's like, the other thing I think is to pay attention if somebody, somebody in the family doesn't like a, like a ritual that you guys do. We used to. So we have, we have Jacob joining the family day but we also have Jacob's birthday. So Jacob was born and then three weeks later we went to Texas to pick him up at the adoption agency. So we always celebrated Jacob's actual birthday and then Jacob joining the family day. And then nine days later we actually did the final adoption because of some weird circumstances. And so we used to have three occasions for him and I always wanted to tell him the story of how we went to get him. When he was 14 or 15, he said, mama, I've heard that story a lot. Could we just skip it this year? Because he's like, I could tell the story, but really, I already know the story. I know you thought it was a funny story. It's a fine story. I don't have a problem with the story, but I'm kind of done with hearing it. And so
in our family, you're allowed to say, actually, this is not working for me.

Kelly
That permission to speak up. 

Terry
Yeah, yeah. And negotiate, kind of, this is a ritual that works for me, or this is actually a ritual that doesn't really work for me.

Kelly
this is good inspiration, Michelle, as we were getting ready to record our holiday episode. this is, yeah, this is excellent inspiration for that.

Michelle
Yes, but it also brings me into the other question that we had, which was you talk about this idea in Adlerian plate therapy of who is my client and who are they today? And I feel like that's coming up a lot with this of you're allowed to say this doesn't work for you, you're allowed to be your own person. But this is something I think a lot of people struggle with is how do you meet your family members as they are?

And how do you meet them as they're showing up in this moment and as your family changes and shifts?

Terry
For me at least, one of the things that we do a lot of is we do some, I call them coming together rituals. I already talked to you about a couple that Rick and I do. the coming together rituals are not designed to say everybody has to be lockstep. What the rituals are designed to do is to say, yeah, we're in this together.

we kind of commit to, and we started doing this when Jacob was really little, like we kind of recommit to, yeah, we want to be connected with one another, we want to stay connected with one another, and these things are important to all of us. And sometimes it's hard, like when Jacob was 13, it was a little creep. I was going to say a bad word. Okay, he was a little shit. And, you know, sometimes it was hard to be around him. And I kept expecting the whole you're not my real mother kind of thing. That wasn't what it was. So there wasn't any of the kind of, I'm, I'm adopted. I don't want to be part of this family, but it was, “I don't like our rules.”

I want to be able to do video games or I want to do video games etc etc so there was a lot of that 13 year old kind of kind of energy and it was hard to be around him and it was and we went to counseling we went to family therapy but we also worked on okay we remember we have these little rituals that we do with each other

So I developed this thing that I call a reset button that I developed basically because Rick and Jake would get in these little power struggles going, which drove me nuts. And so I developed a ritual for them to reset because basically they both wanted to kick each other out of the family.

Yeah, they needed that reset button. Yeah, and you know, like, I don't believe in kicking people out of the family, partly because in my family, my dad used to regularly kick people out of the family. And so I'm kind of opposed to anybody getting kicked out of the family. And so we have all the like, lots of like come together rituals like that. So I developed that for them. I went to a workshop on something called interplay and one of the things they do is these things called “untensives” which are super cool and one of their untensives is or like their forms that they use as kind of a combination of improv and dance and music stuff is they “tone” so what you do is one person sets a long vowel sound and then everybody joins the long vowel sound. So if we start getting upset with one another, somebody will say, I think it's time to tone. And it's one of our coming back together, reconnecting things so that then we can go, okay, I don't like the way you're acting right now or whatever. But we do these kind of like coming together rituals so that we can kind of reset. I don't know if that's what you meant, Kelly.

Kelly
No, that was fabulous, Terry. I want to practice that. That is so good. Can you say it again? It was tone?


Terry
Yes tone. So I would say, Oooooo And then you guys would join me. 

Terry, Kelly and Michelle Tone

Terry
Or some other long vowel sound and what happens is if you do it right and you sit like get in a circle or a triangle or whatever shape so that everybody's facing one another what happens is the sound actually you start feeling it in your body Like I feel it in my heart and and depending on the sound Jake may feel it in his heart, Rick may feel it in his forehead. Rick does energy medicine stuff. And so he does a lot of things connected to like sound and light and touch and things that are all like ritual kinds of things. So we do some of those too.


Michelle (42:45.39)
All right, so for our last section, we like to talk about these specific ritual takeaways. And I feel like we have so many really, really awesome ones that we've talked about today. But one of the ones that you mentioned, Terry, earlier that I think would be so good for listeners to take away is this idea of when you're feeling irritated, noticing what the rule is attached to that.

And even just the example I was talking about, my birthday earlier, was trying to think about what's the rule that goes along with this irritation. And I think I have this rule that if somebody cares about me, they need to really pay attention to me on my birthday. And so if they don't, that means that they don't care about me. And I don't really like that rule and I want to change that.

Terry
Yeah, I used to have a thing that any one of my friends should read my mind and know exactly what would be the perfect gift for me. And if they didn't give me a gift that was perfect, like it meant something bad about our relationship and that they didn't really love me. And I figured out actually that I have very esoteric taste.

And really, like some people actually get me well enough to give me the perfect present, but that's like one in a million people. And it doesn't mean all the rest of the people who purport to love me don't love me just because they don't read my mind and buy me the perfect present. It might just mean they don't have similar tastes to me.

Kelly
Yeah, yes, right, like bringing that compassion piece in. 

Terry
Yeah, I think sometimes people buy presents for other people basically that they would want themselves.


Kelly
Yeah, very true. Yeah, gift giving is not my love language.

I like this, Michelle. And I think not only do I want to notice this in myself, but I would love, this would take some courage, but to start to have these conversations, especially with my family. I was kind of giving Michelle a little sneak peek of I'm feeling like maybe some changes I want to see come with the holidays. But I am nervous to bring them up with my greater family system. not only tapping into this on an individual level, but also being brave and having some of these conversations with family. 

Terry
And it's hard to figure out, do you start with, hey, when you do this, it really irritates me. And my rule is, doesn't actually work. But I did try that with my family of origin. I showed up at a family meeting one day and went, okay, I'm a list of things that are pissing me off. And. I already figured out what rules you guys are all violating and you're gonna stop it - don't try that!

Kelly
Okay, okay, note to self, let's not. It does not work.


Michelle (46:00.91)
Yeah, I think a good question is tying it back into the play therapy and some of the rituals you've mentioned, like, you know, the finger touching or the, you know, the toning. It's like these rituals tap into something beyond just our verbal communication. And I think sometimes people can be intimidated by that, even trying to explain play therapy to families so that they get on board and they see the value in it. Like, how do you explain this to people or how do you recommend getting people on board with doing these rituals that are beyond just our verbal rituals?

Terry 

Well, part of it's going to be what my assessment of the people in power in the family are. Okay. Because I custom design what I say to people if I'm trying to get them on board in therapy. I custom design what I say based on my assessment of their personality priorities. So there are four personality priorities in Adlerian Theory.

I don't know if your people would be interested in this, but other people seem to be, and I teach it to love baristas and waitresses and other people. There are “pleasers.” Pleasers are people who like to keep other people happy. So the way I pitch it to pleasers is this is going to help you get everybody to get along better. Everybody's going to be happier. Everybody, you know, there's going to be fewer conflicts, etc. if you'll do these things. If I'm talking to a control personality priority, I'll say things like, well, you'll be still in charge and you're gonna like want to maybe give people some choices because lots of times people will be more likely to be cooperative if they've got choices.

So I talk about that one with control people with comfort people whose personality priorities comfort what they want to avoid is feeling uncomfortable, stressed or like pressured and what I say to the folk to those folks is hey this is going to make things so much easier and simpler and everything's going to be smoother you'll have a lot more fun in your life.

the last personality party is superiority and that isn't necessarily you want to be better than other people but it's you want to avoid feeling inferior you want to avoid having a meaningless life you want to have a meaningful life and you want to make a difference in the world in some way and so what i say to those people is this is even going to make you a better parent this is going to make this family you know you're you have a great family already this is going to make the family even better

And it's a very subtle way to hook people into being interested in making some changes. So Kelly, if the rest of your family would be into control, if you came in and said, OK, we've got to change the rules here, that's not going to go. But if you said, for instance, hey, guys, there's some things that are really, it feels like they're just not working out for our family very well.

you know, like one example would be when, so in my family of origin, like the boys don't ever help with holiday meals. And I think it would be super cool if we could figure out a way for everybody in the family to help with holiday meals. So like, what do you guys like to do that could be a contribution to the family meal, for instance?

Kelly
that's a nice example. 

Terry
So what I try and do as I'm talking to folks and when I went back to my family of origin and did the next time was I approached it like that. I didn't go into, you know, I'm really into fair. I'm the oldest child. Things should be fair. And these are the seven things that are not fair in our family, which is the way I approached it the first time.

But I went in and said, hey guys, I think we'd have more fun as a family. We'd get along better as a family if we made some really kind of easy, simple shifts that won't be a lot of work for anybody, but it just would be fun.

Kelly
I love how disarming that is. Like it feels really collaborative and where they, yeah, the defenses won't instantly go up.


Terry (51:09.194)
And my family of origin values fun a lot. So when we're with Rick's family, because productivity is important to Rick's family, I'll say things like, hey guys, you know, I just had a thought that we could all be more productive when we're together if we would do this thing. So part of what you want to think about is what do you already know about these people? And what's going to be appealing to them in terms of what would motivate them in order to be willing to do some things a little different.

Kelly
Nice. really good. 

Michelle
And I think, yeah, maybe in part of that conversation, you're talking about people not discussing their rituals, pre-marital, or as a family, even that question of what really drew you to this ritual? What do you love about this tradition that helps tap into those motivations for people?

Terry
Yeah, so, so there's, I think there's lots of ways to introduce the idea that I'd really like to look at these things and see what ones are working for us and what ones aren't. One of the things we did with Rick's family is we made them play the rules game.

We used the original version in which you put parallel lines about maybe eight feet long, like parallel lines out of masking tape on the floor, and then at each end of the opening of the corridor you put an X out of masking tape. So you put an X so you have the two lines and you have an X there and an X there.

And that's the way we did it with their family and then the rules are everybody's got to go from an X to another X three times. Every time you go from an X to another X it needs to be unique, it needs to be different than every other time that you go from an X to another X. When somebody goes from an X to another X, the whole group needs to acknowledge them in some way and you can't do anything that you're gonna hurt yourself doing.

Those are the four rules. But what happens is people make up that they have to stay within the lines. Which isn't one of the rules. 

Kelly
They're just there. 

Terry
They're just there. and people make up they have to do it in a certain order they like … so so say michelle went first and then kelly you went and then i went then if michelle did back and forth and back her three times then you would go back and forth and back your three times and i would go back and forth and back but if michelle went from an x to another x and then went walked around

And then you went from an X to another X and then you walked around and then I would go next. And so whatever the first person does, everyone else follows it. We unconsciously make up rules. Yeah. About how we're supposed to do it. People also, if the first person gets clapped for, everybody else gets clapped for. If the first person. people shout their name, then everybody else has their name shouted, et cetera. So there become rituals built in, which are not part of the real rules.

Michelle
Wow, this is making me even feel excited to have these conversations with my clients because yeah, it's like just thinking about it. I don't know, yeah, this is really shifting things for me. So thank you, Terri, for how you've described and provided so many stories and examples. That is such a helpful way to learn. So thank you. 

Terry
And I'm gonna say, if you just have this conversation with people, it will not have the same impact as if you make them play the game. Because their initial reaction when you say, did you make any rules up? Will be no, like they'll be defensive. And then you point out one that they made up, or you say, well, I think there probably are some rules you made up. Let's look back and see what the real rules were. And what did you act as if is a rule? Because the reality is,
We go through our lives acting as if a whole bunch of made up rules are real rules.

Michelle
This has been so incredible. Yes. Yeah, we've just loved getting to talk to you about all of this. And if you are on the Patreon, we have a few more questions to talk to Terry about, so stick around. And otherwise, wherever you're at, we hope that you're having a magical time.

Kelly
Yes, talk soon. Bye everyone.

Kelly & Michelle
Bye!